Emerging Magazine Articles : August 2014

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Smoke On The Water - Deep Purple Live at the Hard Rock August 29 2014

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Baby Wipes or Quilted Tissue Paper - New Trend is Healthier

More Americans concerned with health issues, real cleanliness and even saving trees are changing what cleans and protects their bottoms. Paper is losing favor.

For years Americans have been pushed to buy tissue paper for bathroom use by large corporate paper companies. Even encouraging you by offering moisturizers or lotions added to toilet tissue for a softer, less irritating feeling.

Although other countries use bidets or other cleaner, better sanitizing and less irritating methods. Americans have continued to use paper, even though the citizens maintain they are more civilized than most other countries.

While more affluent individuals install bidets or bidet seats in their homes, a growing trend is baby wipes or moisturizing wipes.

Some may find this trend surprising, yet Americans do not have any conflict using them on infants and toddlers, only with themselves. Parents are aware of the cleansing and rash reducing effects, not to mention the odor reduction associated with using baby wipes, yet only recently are adults using them for themselves.

Adults using baby wipes or moisturizing wipes use less product to do the job, and cut down the use of paper products by 80% in the bathroom. Another advantage, less plumbing problems and a greater sense of cleanliness.

Baby wipes or moisturizing wipes? Although this is the growing and most popular trend, as with any product, check the ingredients and product ratings.

Here are two examples of the best products in relation to ingredients and biodegradability. Scroll to use the GoodGuide link to discover over 300 products and their ratings.

Bum Booza Bamboo Baby Wipes

   Ingredients: Water, Polysorbate 20, Vegetable Glycerin, Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender) Oil, Citrus Sinensis (Sweet Orange) Oil, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf (Organic Aloe Vera), Calendula Extract, Tocopherol Acetate (Vitamin E), Potassium Sorbate, Sodium Benzoate, Citric Acid

   Notes: Those who have tried these have testified they are soft and work well. They’re also made with bamboo so they are biodegradable and a highly renewable source.

Earth’s Best Tender Care Baby Wipes

Ingredients: Water (Purified), Glycerin (Vegetable), Alkyl Polyglucoside, Aloe Vera (Aloe Barbadensis) Leaf Juice, Citric Acid, Vitamin E, Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate (broad spectrum antimicrobial)

Notes: Not bad and they don’t treat the wipes with chlorine or alcohol. The antimicrobial is a little questionable but it only rates a 2 in Skin Deep. Overall these aren’t the worst and better than conventional wipes any day. They work just as well as any other baby wipe. (They also make flush-able Toddler wipes).

Forget the larger manufacturer brands if you can, they usually contain high chemical amounts, too wet, and more often flush inhibiting. CVS, Walgreen RiteAid brands are far better on your skin and environment than major name brands. Remember: Less fragrance means less chemicals. Seek products that do not contain controversial ingredients.

GoodGuide provides a filter to select fragrance-free products. Often found in baby wipes and hygiene products, fragrance is a catch–all term on ingredient lists that can conceal chemicals tied to allergies, hormone disruption, and neurotoxicity. Look for products from companies that state their products do not contain phthalates or parabens. These compound classes contain specific chemicals that have been linked to health concerns like cancer and developmental problems in babies. Since manufacturers in many baby product categories aren't required to disclose what their products contain, company marketing claims are often the only information a consumer has to make these selections.

On the horizon

As the continuing demand grows for wipes vs toilet tissue, manufacturers are facing the issues addressed by individuals and meeting those issues. Keep in mind,moisturizing wipes are considerably more costly than baby wipes, even though they contain similar chemicals. Manufacturers will be forced to reduce"Adult Wipes" prices as more individuals make the switch to wipes, rather than paper use.

Editors Note: My personal preference is a bidet, at least I know I am completely clean, chemical free, non messy and require paper for drying only. Fast, effective and simple.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

James Wright Foley, Kidnapped Journalist, Apparently Executed by ISIS

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) claims to have beheaded an American photojournalist and has threatened the life of another American journalist if President Obama doesn't stop airstrikes in Iraq.

A graphic video obtained by NBC News purportedly shows James Wright Foley, a freelance journalist for the U.S.-based news service Global Post who was kidnapped while reporting from Syria two years ago, reciting threats against America before he is executed by an ISIS militant. The militant heard in the video speaks in English.

View the full video here: http://www.emergingmagazine.com/#/journalist-beheading/4586140926

The terrorist video shows footage of Obama speaking from the White House on the day he told Americans he had authorized airstrikes in Iraq.

Foley was kidnapped at gunpoint near the town of Taftanaz in northern Syria on Thanksgiving Day in 2012. He had not been heard from during his time in captivity. "We’ve heard nothing. Nothing. We last knew that he was abducted on Thanksgiving Day in the Idlib province, but we don’t know who took him or why," Foley's father, John, said on TODAY last year.

Foley, a native of Rochester, New Hampshire, traveled extensively in the Middle East and North Africa. He reported about conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, where he was once held captive for 44 days.

In May 2011, Foley recorded a video interview with The Boston Globe about his arrest and captivity in Libya. “You don’t want to be defined as that guy who got captured in 2011,” he said. “I believe that front-line journalism is important.”

In the video, ISIS claims they are holding a second journalist, Steven Joel Soltoff. After the apparent beheading, an ISIS fighter stand next to the man identified as Soltoff and declares: "The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision." Sotloff, a freelance who worked for several news organizations, disappeared in Syria in August 2013.

In a statement, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the "intelligence community is working as quickly as possible" to determine the authenticity of the terrorist video. "If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends," she said.

In a statement published on the GlobalPost website, CEO and co-founder Philip Balboni said the organization appreciates “all of the messages of sympathy and support that have poured in since the news of Jim’s possible execution first broke” and asked for “prayers for Jim and his family.” He added that the organization had been informed that the FBI was in the process of reviewing to video.

View the full video here: http://www.emergingmagazine.com/#/journalist-beheading/4586140926

By Daniel Arkin

Monday, August 18, 2014

Ferguson, Missouri: Black Citizen Calls Riots "Planet of the Apes, Part III," Asks for Change in People

The world has been watching as rioters maintain total chaos and complete havoc in Ferguson, Missouri.

Rioters are destroying the very city where they raise their children by burning, looting, and other criminal mischief activities.

How much longer will these acts of violence and bizarre idiosyncrasies continue under the call-to-action slogan, "No Justice, No Peace?" Although everyone knows it will cease, what does this accomplish? Other than demonstrating the unadulterated maniacal and untamed animal behavior of these individuals, what do they hope to accomplish? Will Ferguson ever be the same? Time will only tell.

People took to the street after a Ferguson officer shot and killed Michael Brown, a young black man accused of shoplifting from a store.

Now, there are many accusations pertaining as to why the boy was shot, many stories floating around — most flaring racial injustice, where hate builds up like Krakatoa and can only do harm. Nonetheless, a boy was killed and the people are outraged.

Should they destroy the very streets where they live? Burn down their own salons? In the minds of frightened onlookers and bewildered global citizens sitting in front of their television screens all across the world, "No".

Someone with sanity and intelligence needs to speak up and begin a circle of faith that in the end, it will be what it will be. Someone needs to cry out to the rioters and help them to understand that these riots are not helping and never have helped.

Emerging Magazine came across a very upset black citizen whose message, although crude and direct, essentially tells Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders, they are only causing more trouble and discord.

The message of "No Justice, No Peace" is plain ignorant and will not resolve anything. This enraged citizen says the rioting and insane madness, is like "Planet of the Apes, Part III."

What better speaker than a fellow aggravated and embarrassed resident than this guy?

Here are the words of this citizen in this video.

The man behind Abercrombie & Fitch

Mike Jeffries turned a moribund company into a multibillion-dollar brand by selling youth, sex and casual superiority. Not bad for a 61-year-old in flip-flops.

Mike Jeffries, the 61-year-old CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, says “dude” a lot. He’ll say, “What a cool idea, dude,” or, when the jeans on a store’s mannequin are too thin in the calves, “Let’s make this dude look more like a dude,” or, when I ask him why he dyes his hair blond, “Dude, I’m not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders.”

This fall, on my second day at Abercrombie & Fitch’s 300-acre headquarters in the Ohio woods, Jeffries — sporting torn Abercrombie jeans, a blue Abercrombie muscle polo, and Abercrombie flip-flops — stood behind me in the cafeteria line and said, “You’re looking really A&F today, dude.” (An enormous steel-clad barn with laminated wood accents, the cafeteria feels like an Olympic Village dining hall in the Swiss Alps.) I didn’t have the heart to tell Jeffries that I was actually wearing American Eagle jeans. To Jeffries, the “A&F guy” is the best of what America has to offer: He’s cool, he’s beautiful, he’s funny, he’s masculine, he’s optimistic, and he’s certainly not “cynical” or “moody,” two traits he finds wholly unattractive.

Jeffries’ endorsement of my look was a step up from the previous day, when I made the mistake of dressing my age (30). I arrived in a dress shirt, khakis and dress shoes, prompting A&F spokesman Tom Lennox — at 39, he’s a virtual senior citizen among Jeffries’ youthful workforce — to look concerned and offer me a pair of flip-flops. Just about everyone at A&F headquarters wears flip-flops, torn Abercrombie jeans, and either a polo shirt or a sweater from Abercrombie or Hollister, Jeffries’ brand aimed at high school students.

When I first arrived on “campus,” as many A&F employees refer to it, I felt as if I had stepped into a pleasantly parallel universe. The idyllic compound took two years and $131 million to complete, and it was designed so nothing of the outside world can be seen or heard. Jeffries has banished the “cynicism” of the real world in favor of a cultlike immersion in his brand identity. The complex does feel like a kind of college campus, albeit one with a soundtrack you can’t turn off. Dance music plays constantly in each of the airy, tin-roofed buildings, and when I entered the spacious front lobby, where a wooden canoe hangs from the ceiling, two attractive young men in Abercrombie polo shirts and torn Abercrombie jeans sat at the welcome desk, one checking his Friendster.com messages while the other swayed subtly to the Pet Shop Boys song “If Looks Could Kill.”
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If looks could kill, everyone here would be dead. Jeffries’ employees are young, painfully attractive, and exceedingly eager, and they travel around the campus on playground scooters, stopping occasionally to chill out by the bonfire that burns most days in a pit at the center of campus. The outdoorsy, summer-camp feel of the place is accentuated by a treehouse conference room, barnlike building and sheds with gridded windows, and a plethora of wooden decks and porches. But the campus also feels oddly urban — and, at times, stark and unwelcoming. The pallid, neo-industrial two-story buildings are built around a winding cement road, reminding employees that this is a workplace, after all.

Inside, the airy and modern workspaces are designed to encourage communication and teamwork, and everywhere you look, smiley employees are brainstorming or eagerly recounting their weekends. “I’m not drinking again for a year,” one young employee said to another as they passed me in the hall. There are few “offices” and even fewer doors at A&F central. Jeffries, for example, uses an airy conference room as his office, and he spends much of his days huddling with designers who come armed with their newest ideas and designs.

The press-shy Jeffries rarely grants interviews, but he invited me to A&F’s Ohio headquarters to promote the opening of his first flagship store, a four-story, 23,000-square-foot behemoth across the street from Trump Tower in Manhattan. To celebrate the opening, in November Jeffries threw a packed, ritzy, invitation-only party at the store, at which slightly soused women paid $10 apiece to have Polaroids of themselves taken with shirtless A&F model Matt Ratliff. And why not throw a party? Life is good for Jeffries, who in 14 years has transformed Abercrombie & Fitch from a struggling retailer of “fuddy-duddy clothes” into the most dominant and imitated lifestyle-based brand for young men in America.

Valued at $5 billion, the company now has revenues approaching $2 billion a year rolling in from more than 800 stores and four successful brands. For the kids there’s Abercrombie, aimed at middle schoolers who want to look like their cool older siblings. For high schoolers there’s Hollister, a wildly popular surf-inspired look for “energetic and outgoing guys and girls” that has quickly become the brand of choice for Midwestern teens who wish they lived in Laguna Beach, Calif.

When the Hollister kids head off to college, Jeffries has a brand — the preppy and collegiate Abercrombie & Fitch — waiting for them there. And for the post-college professional who is still young at heart, Jeffries recently launched Ruehl, a casual sportswear line that targets 22- to 35-year-olds.

While Wall Street analysts and the companies’ many critics gleefully predict A&F’s impending demise every year or so, they have yet to be right. The company struggled some in the post-9/11 period, when, unlike other slumping retailers, it refused to offer discounts or promotions. But A&F’s earnings have nonetheless increased for 52 straight quarters, excluding a one-time charge in 2004. “To me it’s the most amazing record that exists in U.S. retailing, period,” says A.G. Edwards analyst Robert Buchanan.

As his A&F brand has reached iconic status, Jeffries has raised prices, only to find that the brand’s loyal fans will gladly pay whatever he asks. Total sales for November 2005 increased 34 percent over the year before, more than five times the gain made by A&F’s main competitor, American Eagle. And while many retailers struggled during the Christmas season, Abercrombie thrived — it scored year-over-year gains of 29 percent in December, compared to 1.5 percent for other specialty retail stores.

Next, Jeffries plans to open his first store overseas, in London, and continue the transformation of A&F from American frat-bro wear to luxury lifestyle brand. I wouldn’t bet against him. If history is any indication, Jeffries won’t let anyone — “girlcotting” high school feminists, humorless Asians, angry shareholders, thong-hating parents, lawsuit-happy minorities, nosy journalists, copycat competitors or uptight moralists — get in his way.

Mike Jeffries is the Willie Wonka of the fashion industry. A quirky perfectionist and control freak, he guards his aspirational brands and his utopian chocolate factory with a highly effective zeal. Those who have worked with him tend to use the same words to describe him: driven, demanding, smart, intense, obsessive-compulsive, eccentric, flamboyant and, depending on whom you talk to, either slightly or very odd. “He’s weird and probably insane, but he’s also unbelievably driven and brilliant,” says a former employee at Paul Harris, a Midwestern women’s chain for which Jeffries worked before becoming CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch in 1992.

Examples of his strange behavior abound. According to Business Week, at A&F headquarters Jeffries always goes through revolving doors twice, never passes employees on stairwells, parks his Porsche every day at the same angle in the parking lot (keys between the seats, doors unlocked), and has a pair of “lucky shoes” he wears when reading financial reports.

His biggest obsession, though, is realizing his singular vision of idealized all-American youth. He wants desperately to look like his target customer (the casually flawless college kid), and in that pursuit he has aggressively transformed himself from a classically handsome man into a cartoonish physical specimen: dyed hair, perfectly white teeth, golden tan, bulging biceps, wrinkle-free face, and big, Angelina Jolie lips. But while he can’t turn back the clock, he can — and has — done the next best thing, creating a parallel universe of beauty and exclusivity where his attractions and obsessions have made him millions, shaped modern culture’s concepts of gender, masculinity and physical beauty, and made over himself and the world in his image, leaving them both just a little more bizarre than he found them.

Much more than just a brand, Abercrombie & Fitch successfully resuscitated a 1990s version of a 1950s ideal — the white, masculine “beefcake” — during a time of political correctness and rejection of ’50s orthodoxy. But it did so with profound and significant differences. A&F aged the masculine ideal downward, celebrating young men in their teens and early 20s with smooth, gym-toned bodies and perfectly coifed hair. While feigning casualness (many of its clothes look like they’ve spent years in washing machine, then a hamper), Abercrombie actually celebrates the vain, highly constructed male. After all, there is nothing casual about an A&F sweatshirt worn over two A&F polos worn over an A&F T-shirt. (A&F has had less of a cultural impact on women’s fashion. Its girls’ line is preppy, sexy and popular, but the company has mostly remained focused on pleasing the all-American college boy.)

For many young men, to wear Abercrombie is to broadcast masculinity, athleticism and inclusion in the “cool boys club” without even having to open their mouths (that may be why the brand is so popular among some gay men who want desperately to announce their non-effeminacy). But because A&F’s vision is so constructed and commodified (and because what A&F sells is not so much manhood but perennial boyhood), there is also something oddly emasculating about it. Compared to the 1950s ideal, A&F’s version of maleness feels restrictive and claustrophobic. If becoming a man is about independence and growing up, then Abercrombie doesn’t feel very masculine at all.

In that way, the brand is a lot like its creator. While Jeffries wears A&F clothes, the uniform doesn’t succeed at making him seem boyish or particularly masculine. And for a man obsessed with creating a “sexy and emotional experience” for his customers, Jeffries comes off as oddly asexual. He is touchy-feely with some of his employees, both male and female, but the touch is decidedly paternal.

Remarkably little is known about Jeffries’ personal life. There are few people who claim to know Jeffries well, and those who do wouldn’t comment for this story. What is known is that Jeffries has a grown son, lives separately from his wife, and, according to Business Week, has a Herb Ritts photo of a toned male torso hanging over the fireplace in his bedroom.

Jeffries wouldn’t discuss any of that with me, and he fidgeted nervously and grew visibly agitated when I asked about several of the many controversies and lawsuits he has weathered in his 14 years at the helm of A&F. Our first bump came when I mentioned the 2002 uproar over the company’s thongs for middle-school girls, which had “Eye Candy” and “Wink Wink” printed on their fronts. “That was a bunch of bullshit,” he said, sweating profusely. “People said we were cynical, that we were sexualizing little girls. But you know what? I still think those are cute underwear for little girls. And I think anybody who gets on a bandwagon about thongs for little girls is crazy. Just crazy! There’s so much craziness about sex in this country. It’s nuts! I can see getting upset about letting your girl hang out with a bunch of old pervs, but why would you let your girl hang out with a bunch of old pervs?”

Later I brought up the brouhaha surrounding the A&F Quarterly, which, until it was discontinued in 2003, boasted articles about the history of orgies and pictures of chiseled, mostly white, all-American boys and girls (but mostly boys) cavorting naked on horses, beaches, pianos, surfboards, statues and phallically suggestive tree trunks. The magalog so outraged the American Decency Association that it called for a boycott and started selling anti-Abercrombie T-shirts: “Ditch Fitch: Abercrombie Peddles Porn and Exploits Children.” Meanwhile, gay men across America were eagerly collecting the magazines, lured by photographer Bruce Weber’s taste for beautiful, masculine boys playfully pulling off each other’s boxers.

Jeffries nearly fell over in exasperation when I mentioned the magalog, although I’m not sure which charge — that he sells sex to kids or that his advertising is homoerotic — bothered him more. “That’s just so wrong!” he said. “I think that what we represent sexually is healthy. It’s playful. It’s not dark. It’s not degrading! And it’s not gay, and it’s not straight, and it’s not black, and it’s not white. It’s not about any labels. That would be cynical, and we’re not cynical! It’s all depicting this wonderful camaraderie, friendship, and playfulness that exist in this generation and, candidly, does not exist in the older generation.”

Jeffries alternates his grumpy defensiveness with moments of surprising candor, making him at times oddly endearing. He admitted things out loud that some youth-focused retailers wouldn’t (which may be why he panicked and pulled his cooperation from this story two days after I left A&F headquarters, offering no explanation). For example, when I ask him how important sex and sexual attraction are in what he calls the “emotional experience” he creates for his customers, he says, “It’s almost everything. That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”

As far as Jeffries is concerned, America’s unattractive, overweight or otherwise undesirable teens can shop elsewhere. “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he says. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”

Jeffries’ obsession with building brands began when he was 5. He grew up in Los Angeles, where his father owned a chain of party supply stores for which a young Jeffries liked to organize and design the windows and counters. “I would always say to my parents, ‘We need another store. We need another!’” Jeffries recalls. “I always wanted to expand and get bigger, and I would get off on saying, ‘Why do we do the fixtures like this? Why don’t we do it another way?’ That totally turned me on.”

Jeffries says he had a “very classic American youth,” although he was not good at sports. “I broke my dad’s heart because I wasn’t good at basketball,” he says. In high school in the late 1950s, Jeffries always wore Levi’s jeans. “Actually, don’t write that,” he tells me, laughing. “But Levi’s was definitely the uniform back then, kind of like what A&F has become. If you didn’t wear 501s you were considered weird.”

No one cool wore Abercrombie & Fitch when Jeffries went off to Claremont McKenna College and then to Columbia University, where he earned a master’s degree in business administration. In fact, the company’s best years were long behind it. Founded in 1892, in its heyday it served Presidents Hoover and Eisenhower (they bought their fishing equipment there), Ernest Hemingway (guns), and Cole Porter (evening clothes). During prohibition A&F was where the in crowd went for its hip flasks. But by the 1970s it had become a fashion backwater, holding on for dear life.

Leslee O’Neill, A&F’s executive vice president of planning and allocation, remembers what the company was like before Jeffries got there. “We had old clothes that no one liked,” she says. “It was a mess, a total disaster. We had this old library at our headquarters with all these really old books. There were croquet sets lying around. It was very English.”

The company, which since 1988 had been owned by the Limited, was losing $25 million a year when Jeffries arrived and announced that A&F could survive and prosper as a “young, hip, spirited company.” “We’re all there thinking, Oh yeah, right. Abercrombie & Fitch?” recalls O’Neill. “But in the end we were like, Well, why not? It can’t get any worse.” Jeffries, then in his late 40s, dressed in oxford shirts and corduroy pants. “He was a lot more normal back then,” O’Neill says. “Today he’s much more eccentric, obviously.”

Maybe, although former co-workers at Paul Harris recall that Jeffries had an odd personal style even back then. “He wore the same outfit to work every day,” recalls Thomas Yeo, a Paul Harris colleague. “Nearly worn-out suede loafers, a pair of gray flannel pants, and a double-breasted navy blazer. I don’t think he ever changed his clothes. All that seemed to matter to him was the success of the brand.”

Jan Woodruff, who also worked with Jeffries at Paul Harris, remembers him as a workaholic. “If he had a life outside work, it wasn’t something people knew about,” says Woodruff. But Woodruff and others say he has a superlative fashion mind. “It’s so rare to find someone who is brilliant at both the creative and the business sides. But Jeffries is both. He’s good at thinking in broad terms, but he’s also obsessed with details. And I’ve never seen anyone as driven as Mike. I had no doubt he would be incredibly successful if he found the right venue. And he found it.”

Soon after taking over A&F, Jeffries went looking early on for the right man to help him make A&F a sexy, aspirational brand. He settled on Bruce Weber, already a renowned photographer known for his male nudes. “But back then we couldn’t afford him for an actual shoot,” Jeffries told me, “so we bought one picture from him and hung it in a store window.”

Fourteen years later, Jeffries’ success is the envy of the fashion world. In a recent feature called “The Abercrombie Effect” in DNR, a newsmagazine about men’s fashion and retail, the magazine noted that “not since Ralph Lauren’s ascent in the 1980s has a single brand perfected a lifestyle-based look so often alluded to and imitated.” Now Ralph Lauren’s doing the imitating, opening a chain of collegiate, WASPy Polo knockoff stores called Rugby for young customers, featuring in-store grunge bands and beautiful salespeople.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” says Margaret Doerrer, national sales manager for young men at Union Bay, another youth-oriented label. “In the young men’s market, for the longest time no one was creating a ‘lifestyle.’ Particularly in the department stores, everyone was focused on hip-hop and urban brands, and no one was creating that average, American Joe look. Jeffries never lost sight of who his customer is, and he created a quality brand that caters to the cool clique and has a sense of exclusivity, yet it still has a mass appeal, because people want to be a part of it. It’s genius.”

Maybe it’s just the price of success, but it’s not a normal day in America if someone isn’t suing (or boycotting, or “girlcotting”) Abercrombie & Fitch, which has become a lightning rod for both the left and the right. In 2004 A&F paid $40 million to settle a class-action suit brought by minority employees who said they were either denied employment or forced to work in back rooms, where they wouldn’t be seen by customers. While A&F denied any wrongdoing, Jeffries said the suit taught him a lesson: “I don’t think we were in any sense guilty of racism, but I think we just didn’t work hard enough as a company to create more balance and diversity. And we have, and I think that’s made us a better company. We have minority recruiters. And if you go into our stores you see great-looking kids of all races.”

In the latest episode, last fall a group of high school girls from Allegheny County, Penn., made the rounds of television talk shows to protest the company’s “offensive” T-shirts. Of particular concern were shirts that read “Who Needs a Brain When You Have These?” “Gentlemen Prefer Tig Ol’ Bitties” and “Do I Make You Look Fat?”

“Abercrombie has a history of insensitivity,” the group’s well-spoken Emma Blackman-Mathis, 16, told me, “and there is no company with as big an impact on the standards of beauty. There are kids starving themselves so they can be the ‘Abercrombie girl,’ and there are guys who think they aren’t worthy if they don’t look exactly like the guys on the wall.”

The protest (which resulted in A&F pulling “Who Needs a Brain When You Have These?” and “Gentlemen Prefer Tig Ol’ Bitties” but retaining “Do I Make You Look Fat?” and others) began after my visit, so I couldn’t ask Jeffries about it. But I did ask him about other T-shirt dust-ups, including “It’s All Relative in West Virginia” (which West Virginia’s governor didn’t find funny), Bad Girls Chug. Good Girls Drink Quickly (which angered anti-addiction groups), and Wong Brothers Laundry Service — Two Wongs Can Make It White (which triggered protests from Asian groups).

Remarkably, Jeffries says he has a “morals committee for T-shirts” whose job it is to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen. “Sometimes they’re on vacation,” he admits with a smile. “Listen, do we go too far sometimes? Absolutely. But we push the envelope, and we try to be funny, and we try to stay authentic and relevant to our target customer. I really don’t care what anyone other than our target customer thinks.”

What about shareholders? Last year aggrieved Abercrombie shareholders filed a suit against the company alleging that Jeffries’ compensation was excessive. (The suit was settled; his $12 million “stay bonus” was reduced to $6 million, and he gave up some stock options. In 2004 he made approximately $25 million.) Other suits, still pending, accuse Jeffries of misleading stockholders about the company’s profits. “You settle because it’s a distraction,” Jeffries told me. “I can’t let anybody be distracted here. Me included. We are passionate about what we do here on a daily basis, and if any of us is tied up with this nonsense, it’s counterproductive. We’re a very popular company. We have a lot of money. And we’re targets.”

Jeffries dismisses the idea that he courts controversy deliberately to sell clothes, although the endless complaints about Abercrombie perverting the minds of America’s youth undoubtedly makes the brand even more appealing to them. Meanwhile, the slogan-free items, which are for the most part as unthreatening as those of any other, less controversial label, fly under the parental radar. “Abercrombie remains a very acceptable look for Mom,” says Union Bay’s Doerrer. “I don’t think many mothers of 16-year-old boys dressed in Abercrombie will make them go upstairs and change.”

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Jeffries says that A&F is a collaborative environment (“a diva-free zone,” is how he put it to me), but in the end he makes every decision — from the hiring of the models to the placement of every item of clothing in every store. There are model stores for each of the four brands at A&F headquarters, and he spends much of his time making sure they’re perfect. When they are, everything is photographed and sent to individual outlets to be replicated to the last detail. If there’s an A&F diva, it’s Jeffries.

I got a firsthand look at his perfectionism in action when he invited me along for the final walk-through for the Christmas setup of his stores.

“How does a store look? How does it feel? How does it smell? That’s what I’m obsessed with,” Jeffries said as we walked quickly toward the Hollister model store surrounded by a handful of his top deputies, including Tom Mendenhall, a senior vice president whom Jeffries recently lured away from Gucci.

Inside the dimly lit Hollister store, which is designed to look like a cozy California beach house (there are surfboards, canoes, comfy chairs to lounge in, magazines to read, and two screens with live shots of Huntington Beach, courtesy of cameras permanently affixed to a pier), Jeffries paused in front of two mannequins and shook his head. “No, no, we’re still not there, guys,” he shouted over the No Doubt song “Spiderwebs,” which blasted throughout the store. He stared at the jeans on the female mannequin. “The jeans are too high. I think she has to be lower.”

A guy named Josh got down on his knees and started fidgeting with the jeans, trying to pull them down so they hung to the ground. “And we need to make the leg as skinny as we can,” Jeffries said. “Should we clip the back of the leg in the knee?” Two employees scurried off to get clips. “We want it bigger at the top and skinnier at the legs. Yes, that’s sexier. Much better. That’s less butch.” (Jeffries isn’t a fan of the “butch” look, though when they were all the rage he grudgingly incorporated camouflage army pants into his Hollister line for girls.)

Jeffries then turned his attention to the male mannequin. “OK, how rugged and masculine can we make this guy?” he asked, prompting a couple of his assistants to fidget with the jeans, making them bigger in the leg. “Good, he looks cooler now. He’s got more attitude. We love attitude.”

There was more mannequin fixing at the A&F store, where a male one decked out in jeans wasn’t looking very manly. “We have to fix this guy’s package,” Jeffries said. “We could stuff him,” a girl suggested while a guy fiddled with the crotch, trying to make it poofier. With that fixed, Jeffries turned to a male mannequin in cargo pants. To make sure it looked realistic, he had a very attractive male employee put on a pair of the pants and stand next to the mannequin. “That looks great,” he said as the young man did a 360, the pants sagging off his ass. Jeffries looked at the mannequin again. “Are the pants low enough? This guy’s got it lower.”

“They’re right at the edge of falling off,” said an assistant.

“OK, that’s good,” Jeffries said. “Let’s get them as low as we can without them falling off. We don’t want him looking like an old guy.”

This story has been corrected since it was originally published.

B. Denizet-Lewis is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. He is working on a book about addiction in America.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

A beautiful letter written by Zelda Williams

"My family has always been private about our time spent together. It was our way of keeping one thing that was ours, with a man we shared with an entire world. But now that’s gone, and I feel stripped bare. My last day with him was his birthday, and I will be forever grateful that my brothers and I got to spend that time alone with him, sharing gifts and laughter. He was always warm, even in his darkest moments. While I’ll never, ever understand how he could be loved so deeply and not find it in his heart to stay, there’s minor comfort in knowing our grief and loss, in some small way, is shared with millions. It doesn’t help the pain, but at least it’s a burden countless others now know we carry, and so many have offered to help lighten the load. Thank you for that.

To those he touched who are sending kind words, know that one of his favorite things in the world was to make you all laugh. As for those who are sending negativity, know that some small, giggling part of him is sending a flock of pigeons to your house to poop on your car. Right after you’ve had it washed. After all, he loved to laugh too…

Dad was, is and always will be one of the kindest, most generous, gentlest souls I’ve ever known, and while there are few things I know for certain right now, one of them is that not just my world, but the entire world is forever a little darker, less colorful and less full of laughter in his absence. We’ll just have to work twice as hard to fill it back up again."

Here’s Zelda’s full statement from her personal Tumblr.

The Full Transcript From the Press Conference Regarding the Death of Actor Robin Williams

"First off, I would like to extend the condolences of the Sheriff’s offices to the Williams family before we begin. I have a prepared statement, and I ask you withhold your questions until the end of the statement. My last name is spelled B-O-Y-D.

On August 11th, 2014, at approximately 11:55 am, Marin County Communications received a 9-1-1 telephone call reporting that a male adult had been located unconscious and not breathing inside his residence located at 95 St. Thomas Way in unincorporated Tiburon, California.

The caller was distraught and indicated at that time that an apparent suicide due to a hanging and that rigor mortis had set in. The sheriff’s office, as well as representatives of the Tiburon fire department and Marin fire protection district were dispatched to the incident with emergency personnel arriving on scene at 12:00 pm. The male subject who was pronounced at the scene by firefighters from the Tiburon fire department at 12:02 pm has been identified as Robin McLauren Williams, a 63-year-old resident of unincorporated Tiburon, California. Preliminary information developed during the investigation by coroner division personnel has revealed Mr. Williams had been seeking treatment for depression.

Mr. Williams was last seen alive by his wife at approximately 10:30 pm on August 10th, 2014, when she retired for the evening in a room in the home. It is unknown at this time when Mr. Williams retired for the evening in a bedroom in his home. At approximately 10:30 am, on August 11th, 2014, Mr. Williams’ wife left the home believing Mr. Williams to still be asleep. Mr. Williams personal assistant became concerned at approximately 11:45 am when he failed to respond to knocks on his bedroom door.

    At that time, the personal assistant was able to gain access to Mr. Williams’ bedroom and enter the bedroom to find Mr. Williams clothed in a seated position, unresponsive with a belt secured around his neck with the other end of the belt wedged between the closed closet door and the door frame. His right shoulder area was touching the door with his body perpendicular to the door and slightly suspended. Mr. Williams, at that time, was cold to the touch with rigor mortis present in his body and rigor mortis positioned appropriately from the position he was in. The inside of Mr. Williams’ left wrist had several acute superficial transverse cuts. A pocket knife with a closed blade was located in close proximity to Mr. Williams. The pocket knife was examined and a dry, red material was located on the blade of the knife which appeared consistent to dried blood. It is unknown at this time if the dried, red material is, in fact, blood or if it is Mr. Williams’ blood. But scientific testing will be conducted to evaluate its investigative value.

    Mr. Williams was transported from the scene to the Marin County sheriff’s office by the coroner division pending a forensic examination which was conducted this morning prior to this press conference. A forensic examination conducted by Dr. Joseph Cohen, who is the Marin County’s chief forensic pathologist, did not reveal any injuries indicating Mr. Williams had been in a struggle or physical altercation prior to him being located deceased. The preliminary, and I say again preliminary, results of the forensic examination reveal supporting physical signs that Mr. Williams’ life ended from asphyxia due to hanging. Toxicology testing will be conducted to determine if Mr. Williams had any chemical substances in his system at the time of his death. Toxicology results will not be available for approximately two to six weeks while the testing is being performed.

    Please note this is an active investigation into the cause, manner, and circumstances of Mr. Williams’ death. The work of the coroner’s office is not complete at this time. The final cause and manner of death will not be certified until the conclusion of the investigation which is several weeks away. When the investigation is concluded and our final results are ready for dissemination, a press conference will be scheduled at that time. Additionally, I have received numerous requests for copies of 911 and dispatch reportings as well as investigative reports. Please note each request will be handled in accordance with public record guidelines with responses provided to those who have submitted them within 10 days. Media inquiries should be continued to be directed to me, Lt. Keith Boyd, via my email at KBoyd@Marinsheriff.org. I will respond to these inquiries time permitting as I receive them. Please keep in mind that the coroner’s division is also investigating active cases from other residence in this community, so I will respond to your written inquiries time permitting."

End of transcript.

Actor Robin Williams was a true gift, his death beyond tragic. Depression is a disease, and it is a shame that so many have lost loved ones because of this disease.

Monday, August 11, 2014

The Marin County Sheriff's Office is investigating death of actor Robin Williams.

The Marin County Sheriff's Office is investigating the death of actor Robin Williams. Check back for updates.

Update:

Oscar winning actor and comedian Robin Williams died this morning at 63. While his publicist wouldn’t confirm that it was a suicide, they did issue this statement. “Robin Williams passed away this morning. He has been battling severe depression of late. This is a tragic and sudden loss. The family respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time.”

Williams, who won an Oscar for his supporting role in Good Will Hunting, will reprise his role as Theodore Roosevelt in the third installment of Night at the Museum this December.

He had recently signed on to reprise his beloved role as Mrs. Doubtfire in a sequel to be directed by Chris Columbus and was last seen opposite Annette Bening in the indie film The Face of Love.

According to a press release issued by the Marin County Coronor’s office, the Sheriff’s office suspects the death to be “suicide due to asphyxia.” The 9-1-1 phone call came in just before noon today.

Around 11:55 a.m. Monday, sheriff's officials said, a 911 call came in about a man unresponsive in his home in Tiburon. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Check out this MSN video - Depression, Addiction - Robin Williams' Dual Struggle

Update 08/13/2014

The Full Transcript From the Press Conference Regarding the Death of Actor Robin Williams